You know? I think if I had been the same poster but male I would not have got so much in your face contempt from the on-line ladies. I really do.
You think?
Good grief, what has gender got to do with anything? Since when does the truth depend on gender?
And they haven't answered me anything yet.
We have given comprehensive answers, but you don't believe a single thing we say. :ignore: That is your choice to make.
You are free to believe or to disbelieve anything you like...that is the point. We will all be judged on what we believe....but we must understand that our beliefs may not be true, no matter how sincere we are. The heart can be a betrayer and will get its own selfish way if we let it. (Matt 7:21-23; Jer 17:9)
The important question that has gone unanswered is "why do the Jehovah's Witnesses prove their own righteousness by a book belonging to Babylon the Great who they say God has already deemed unrighteous?"
How twisted.
It is not a book that belongs to Babylon the great, it is God's word....in a book that came down through history and, in the hands of Babylon the great, almost went out of existence. If not for the brave souls who had God's spirit and backing to preserve it, it may well have been lost in the cloistered monasteries of men who never served the God of the Bible in the first place.
When it was time to clean up false worship, God sent his messengers into the world to correct his people. In the first century, Jesus was that messenger. In Israel's past, many messengers were used to give correction to God's people to let them know that they had corrupted his worship and that their conduct was unacceptable. Instead of allowing the words of those messengers to correct their error, they killed them in order to silence their stinging words. Nothing has changed. People today would still rather shoot the messenger than correct their erroneous thinking.
God does not operate through individuals. Since forming his people into a nation, he has guided them organizationally. He appointed men to guide his people and to "feed" them spiritually. If one was not part of that organized people, then one was outside of God's arrangement. There is just one table where spiritual "food" is served. And men were appointed to do that. We are not instructed to "feed" ourselves, nor did Jesus say that he was going to feed his disciples individually....but only through this one channel would the entire 'household' be fed. It is up to us to identify that channel and household. We believe we have. You are free to disagree.
The Christian arrangement was to have men were appointed to lead the congregations in worship. We are told to "be obedient" to such ones and to "submit" to their leadership. (Heb 13:17) The fact is, if one refuses to do that then one is not part of God's congregation for Christian worshippers.
'Love among themselves'...being united in worship...being 'no part of the world'....and 'preaching the good news of God's kingdom in all the inhabited earth' is not a task for one person in isolation. Meeting together was required of God's worshippers.
The early Christians were grouped in congregations.
In the Revelation, Christ addresses the congregations, and holds them to account...he does not address individuals.
Hurling insults and casting aspersions on the role of men that God has appointed to shepherd his people was in times past viewed very negatively by God. So it is apparent that either God is acting contrary to his stated methods of the past or he has chosen individuals to operate independently of his organized people for some reason? I find no scripture to indicate that he has done this.
If the tree is bad the fruit is bad.......but not always (according to the ladies)
The first part is very true in essence. But you are insinuating that the word of God is contaminated because Christendom became contaminated. Not so.:no:
Apparently the integrity of the Christian congregation was going to be lost forever in your estimations...and God's word along with it? Christendom did not produce the Bible. It was always God's word, just as it was in the hands of the faithless Pharisees. Their conduct did not invalidate it as the word of God.
It was foretold that a 'cleansing and refining' would take place and that 'insight' would be granted to faithful ones in "the time of the end". (Dan 12:9, 10)
I believe that this has happened and that Babylon the great has been identified and that God's people have obeyed God's command to "get out of her". (Rev 18:4, 5)
You can believe whatever you wish. It's just that none of it meshes with what the Bible says....unless of course God has authorized you to override it.